Its research focused on the Turkic world and counted with the support of both the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Intelligence Organization.
[1] Its origins date back to the 1950s, when an American delegation in Turkey suggested the establishment of a Turkish branch of the Eastern European Institute in Munich.
[2] In 1960 a commission comprising Ahmet Temir, an Turkilogist born in Kazan, Abidin İtil, an Indologist from Baku and Osman Nedim Tuna, a Turkish linguist of Old Turkic was tasked with preparing the statutes.
[2] Following the Military coup in 1980 the Institute aimed at countering the Kurdish insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers Party by publishing books that denied an existence of Kurds.
[2] From 1964 onwards the Türk Kültürü Arastirmali was published, a scholar semi annual magazine focusing of the Turkish language and the Geography.